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Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “Get up, Church in Africa, family of God...Take the journey of a new evangelization with the courage that comes from the Holy Spirit...Courage! Get on your feet, continent of Africa. Welcome with renewed enthusiasm the proclamation of the Gospel so that the face of Christ might illuminate with its splendor the multiplicity of the cultures and languages of your populations.” This was the exhortation that resounded loud and clear in Saint Peter's Basilica, at the close of the homily given by the Holy Father Benedict XVI on Sunday, October 25, during the Eucharistic Celebration with the Synod Fathers, at the conclusion of the II Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops. The Pope affirmed: “As she offers the bread of the Word and the Eucharist, the Church dedicates herself also to work, with every means available, so that no African will be without daily bread. This is why, along with the task of primary urgency of evangelization, Christians are active in the interventions of human promotion.”
In the homily, the Pope reflected on the Biblical readings from the Mass, highlighting that “God's plan does not change. Through the centuries and the upheavals of history, he always points to the same goal: the Kingdom of freedom and of peace for all. And this implies his predilection for those who are deprived of freedom and peace, for those whose dignity as human persons is violated. We think in particular of the brothers and sisters in African who suffer from poverty, disease, injustice, war and violence, forced migrations.”
The Holy Father compared “these favored children of the heavenly Father” to the blind Bartimaeus, who was begging by the gates of Jericho, along the Jesus' path towards Jerusalem. “Bartimaeus who, after he is healed, follows Jesus along the road, is the image of humanity that, enlightened by faith, sets out on the journey to the promised land. Bartimaeus, in turn, becomes a witness of the light, recounting and showing in the first person that he has been healed, renewed, reborn. This is the Church in the world: the community of reconciled persons, workers for peace and justice; 'salt and light' in the midst of the society of men and the nations. For this reason the Synod has forcefully reemphasized -- and has manifested -- that the Church is the Family of God, in which there cannot be ethnic, linguistic or cultural divisions.”
Mentioning the second reading, Benedict XVI highlighted the “priestly form” of the Church: “the ecclesial community, in the footsteps of her Master and Lord, is called to take the road of service in a decisive manner, to share completely in the situation of the men and women of her time, to witness before all to God's love and thus to sow hope.” Benedict XVI continued by reflecting on the fact that “the Church transmits this message of salvation always joining together evangelization and human promotion,” and what Paul VI writes in the historic encyclical Populorum progressio, “missionaries have realized and continue to realize in the field, promoting a development respectful of local cultures and the environment, according to a logic that now, after 40 years, appears to be the only one able to bring the African people out of the slavery of hunger and disease. This means transmitting the announcement of hope according to a 'priestly form,' that is, living the Gospel in the first person, trying to translate it into projects and deeds consistent with the fundamental dynamic principle that is love.”
The Holy Father then mentioned the need to “renew the global model of development,” in such a way that it is capable "of including within its range all peoples and not just the better off,” recalling the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church, according to which globalization “must not be understood fatalistically as if its dynamics produced by anonymous impersonal forces and independently of human will.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 26/10/2009)
